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 As an author, I aspire to be like certain authors, and truth be told, I am always gazing toward Melville, Orwell, and Dostoyevsky. I am none of these three in terms of talent, but when I craft a novel, this trio always sits like a panel of judges in the back of my mind, simply because their works have struck me in the most powerful ways, thus I want to emulate them. So I’m a fanboy after all, just not for video games, but for literature.
When a work gets published, the world gets to define it in terms that live outside the author’s mind, popping the bubble the author lived inside while writing the story. This can be a blessing or a curse, depending on what other books are name-dropped in the reviews. When the Financial Times reviewed . . . → Read More: The typecast curse: When a book review marries you to another author
 Getting cold yet? Batten down the hatches with A Town Called Immaculate, now on Kindle. Check out the reviews below!
Review from the Financial Times (Review by James Urquhart)
With its terse emotions, rural dysfunction and sharply comic moments, this suspenseful debut shares midwestern ambiance and territory with the Coen brothers’ Fargo. An array of strong characters gives a bright, nervy edge to Anthony’s fresh prose.
Review from the South Wales Argus (Read full review)
Josh Werther is the first to offer help to find the missing boy Jacob Marak, but it soon becomes evident that Josh’s interest goes further then just ‘being neighbourly’.
I found this novel a very . . . → Read More: Warm up Christmas with a blizzard: A Town Called Immaculate now on Kindle
You could say I like to jump around, or that I’ve come full circle. My first novel, A Town Called Immaculate, took place on a Minnesota farm. My second novel, Drill & Sanctimony, took place in a hot Missouri boot camp setting. Then I dived into the corporate rogue technothriller in Accelerating Returns (coming soon).
Now I’m building on the novel that started it all. I’ve completed a second draft of a book called The Plenty. It is the first sequel to A Town Called Immaculate. With the harvest underway and children preparing for Halloween, the Marak and Werther families clash once again over faith, farming, and family ties.
The Plenty takes place within a twenty-four hour period, following the model of A Town Called Immaculate, but begins ten years after Ray Marak learned that Josh Werther is the biological father . . . → Read More: The Immaculate series – Back to the farm for part two of the family saga
A Town Called Immaculate
Review by James Urquhart
Published: December 15 2007 00:44 | Last updated: December 15 2007 00:44
A Town Called Immaculate By Peter Anthony Macmillan £14.99 FT bookshop price: £11.99
Taciturn Vietnam vet Ray Marak struggles to keep his dairy farm solvent in Immaculate, Minnesota, a devoutly Catholic town whose men are “too much in love with liquor, cows, or both”. Ray’s beautiful high-school sweetheart Renee has endured her own parents’ demise and Ray’s presumed death in action before he stumbled back into her life and a decade of strained but solid marriage.
But when a snowstorm dumps Josh Werther, the Maraks’ banker, half-frozen on their doorstep, all three have to confront some uncomfortable truths. With its terse emotions, rural dysfunction and sharply comic moments, this suspenseful debut shares midwestern ambience and territory with the Coen brothers’ Fargo. An array . . . → Read More: Review from The Financial Times
With a bigger hole in the ice, Jacob imagined that the fish would be easier to catch. That way, he could drop the five-gallon pail directly into the water, put the dog kibbles in the bottom, and then sit back and wait for the fish to swim inside.
Before picking up the ice-drill again, he looked at his ten year old brother, Ethan, who sat on the other side of the pond staring down at his conventional sized hole. Satisfied that Ethan would not ruin the experiment by acting like a parent, Jacob laid the ice-drill flat on the surface and used it like an architect’s compass, spinning it around and outlining a circular perimeter of depressed snow. He lifted the drill up to his chest, dropped the point on the ice, and started turning the handcrank. At a rate of one per minute he twisted holes through the ice . . . → Read More: Excerpt from “A Town Called Immaculate”: Chapter 1
Hank Murphy spoke into the CB radio to the other drivers, “What’s pink and wet and you have to eat a lot of it to get your fill? Over.”
Blanks responded, “That’s easy.”
“Wrong, over.”
“How can I be wrong? I haven’t even guessed yet.”
“The answer is watermelon, over.”
“That’s what I was going to say, over.”
“Yeah, you bet.”
“Roger that.”
Ben Masterson said into his CB, “Sick, sick minds. It’s coming down heavy now on my side of town. Over.”
Blanks answered, “We are definitely underway. Highway 12 is starting to pile up. Blowing more by the minute, too. I was thinking, this summer we should plant some trees on that sharp turn by Broan’s farm. It piles up really fast. Over.”
“You do that, Johnny Appleseed,” said Hank. “In fact, write up a memo about your plan and have it on my desk in the morning. . . . → Read More: Excerpt from “A Town Called Immaculate”: Chapter 13
See the online review here.
The Observer, Sunday November 30 2008
A Town Called Immaculate by Peter Anthony Pan Books, £7.99
The titular town, a tiny Minnesota farming community, struggles to live up to its name. Beneath its Catholic values lurk such problems as abusive parents and husbands, alcoholism and gnawing discontent. It’s Christmas Eve and while the inhabitants batten down the hatches against a blizzard, they should probably brace themselves for a storm of secrets also waiting to rage. The hero, Ray Marak, has plenty of clandestine troubles, not least impending bankruptcy, Vietnam War demons and an eccentric son. But his wife Renee has awkward secrets of her own. Along with some clunky passages and a few shadows of The Shining, Anthony evokes the claustrophobic small town and stifling family obligations, both apparently inescapable.
Read full review.
A Town called Immaculate
3:01pm Friday 28th November 2008
By Jo Milne
A Town called Immaculate by Peter Anthony (Pan MacMillan £7.99).
IMMACULATE is a small, rural, town in America. It is home to Ray, his beautiful wife and their two sons and it’s the last Christmas they’ll be spending on their farm since being declared bankrupt.
After having done his time in Vietnam Ray is doing his best to put his past behind him until a deadly snowstorm hits the town.
Ray saves the life of his friend and neighbour, Josh, but his own son goes missing. Josh is the first to offer help to find Jacob but it soon becomes evident that Josh’s interest goes further then just ‘being neighbourly’.
I found this novel a very gripping debut with the odd comedy moment that anyone from a small town . . . → Read More: Review from the South Wales Argus
Read full review.
Admittedly, the title is a little worn, but for me that just provides me with the blanket of safety in recognition. There is more to this debut novel than its title however.
I like Anthony’s style, with its contradiction of warmth and coolness, the savoir-faire of a man delivering a carefully constructed story intermingled with the softness of a man who has perhaps experienced familial pain (don’t we all?). Immaculate is a thoughtful and provocative take on fidelity, but more so, an insight into the dysfunction of family life. It certainly made my upbringing of being abandoned in my cocoon to survive or no, seem quite pallid by comparison. At least I know who I am – and certainly, being dangled from a hook over open water is terrifying, but so is being in the middle of a pointless and unwanted war . . . → Read More: Doodled Books Review
A Town Called Immaculate
By Peter Anthony
Reviewed by Denise M. Clark
Immaculate is one of the best novels this reader/reviewer has had the pleasure to review in a long time.
Immaculate is the name of a small and isolated town in Minnesota that is preparing for a severe weather front on Christmas Eve, 1981. The plot revolves around Ray and Renee Marak and their two children, Jacob and Ethan. Ray, a Vietnam veteran, is a struggling farmer in debt, though his reputation in town is solid and filled with awe. Renee, his wife, has long grown resigned to living her life as a farmer’s wife and mother, though she yearns for more.
Hours before the building storm strikes Immaculate, both Mother Nature and social interactions with townspeople threaten Ray and Renee’s marriage, family and relationships with friends. The oncoming storm serves as the focal point of the story, and . . . → Read More: Review from Denise’s Pieces
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